When the ACT Government made its announcement that the DA for the supermarket complex in Dickson had been approved, it set off a curious chain of events.

The manner by which the announcement was handled by the government has increased the evidence of the growing gap between our elected politicians and the issues and aspirations of the voters.

I first became aware of this planning announcement through an online article. Soon the phones started to ring – there were newspapers, radio and TV stations looking for residents to make comment on the decision.

What struck me as curious was that the announcement made by the ACT Government’s Environment and Planning Directorate was not giving much away. It was more of a pre-announcement. There was something missing in all this. In the past if you had lodged an objection to such a DA, you received a formal detailed notice on the decision.

As the calls came in, locals soon found that they were unable to respond fully as the formal announcement and all the important details were yet to be made public. Crucially, one major objection last time was that the building itself was a monster and would set a low standard for future developments around Dickson.

Last time there were images of what was being proposed. This time there was nothing. No plans, no traffic stuff, no landscape stuff – nothing. Curious again.

We were very suspicious that the Directorate chiefs had carefully planned it this way. Namely to drop limited information into the media so that there was not enough information for the residents to respond properly to media queries.

A couple of weeks ago we had heard that this announcement was due. But the weeks went by and nothing happened. Being experienced in dealing with planning matters, we had predicted that they would announce it the day before the federal election to ensure that it did not last too long in the media. We were wrong – by a day – as they announced it just two days before the election.

There are many examples of how games have been played in releasing information to the public. From the residents’ point of view – sadly it is now normal – it is what they do.

For example there was a very serious case last year whereby the bureaucracy had agreed to meet several local groups to discuss the future of the Dickson Parklands. The round table discussions were friendly. Residents proposed changes and the bureaucrats seemed to accept at least some of our arguments.

To our amazement, we later discovered that the decisions had been finalised previous to the meeting and that a media release announcing them was released as we left the building. Not good.

So the meeting was simply a token exercise. Those who attended expressed a load of anger about the blatant deception that they had witnessed.

All this is happening despite the Government’s Environment and Planning Directorate stating online that it is ‘committed to strong and inclusive consultation with community’.

Let’s return to this recent episode.

In between interviews that afternoon I called by home to discover that the formal notice had arrived around 1pm. Unfortunately it was very badly written and was not clear on the reasons for the approval especially given how strongly the former had been rejected. Some of the statements in the approval notice were laughable, were vague and were not evidence based.

There were still no images, plans or any real useful stuff offered or seemingly available anywhere.

The next day, Friday, I fronted up for an ABC radio interview on the topic. I was asked to respond to recorded statements made by the same Directorate’s Deputy Director General and Chief Operating Officer*. Again, I had to do so without the detailed information and still without any images of the new proposed building.

The interview was friendly enough. But what was obvious was the success of the directorate’s strategy whereby their Deputy Generalissimo had spoken to the media using very carefully crafted statements without informing the public of the details of the announcement.

Such is the state of the modern media whereby they have little resources or time or in some cases the inclination to ascertain what the issues are before they conduct such interviews. In this case they were working solely from the script as provided by the Directorate’s Deputy Generalissimo.

One of the questions asked on air was whether planning could be an issue for the 2016 ACT elections. At the time I quickly answered that it should be. Later I reconsidered this question. If given the opportunity again – I would probably answer a little differently.

This chain of events reinforces the perception that much of contemporary government and their planning and development bureaucrats conduct their business with no real focus on the issues and aspiration of the electorate.

The current ACT Government has adopted an adversarial attitude towards the residents. They seem to be blind to the much talked about situation whereby communities are witnessing a government that is working against them on so many levels. Such unpleasant adversarial attitudes and strategies are obvious and do nothing to build trust.

So while I cannot guarantee that planning will be an issue in the coming 2016 ACT elections, I feel certain that such questionable planning decisions are leading to a growing frustration with the ACT Government that will lead to many former supporters rethinking their votes.

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Paul Costigan

 

Update – the detailed planning stuff mentioned above was (after several requests) extracted from the department on Tuesday  – being several days late and therefore shortening the time for anyone to respond.

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Footnotes:

For further reading on the state of journalism I highly recommend Flat Earth News (2008) – Nick Davies.

In researching this piece, I became more aware of the quiet disappearance of the former ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA). There’s an article to come on that.

I have highlighted the wondrous title being used by our planning officials –  such as: Deputy Director General and Chief Operating Officer. Such a title conjures up images of a uniformed bureaucrat team not unlike the current uniforms worn by our infamous border protection squads. I can see them now rattling their Planning Directorate Generalissimo sabres (or is that clip boards) as they descend on the residents to check out their planning meta-data.